Andrei Lankov

Andrei Nikolaevich Lankov (; born 26 July 1963) is a Russo-Australian scholar of Asia and specialist in Korean studies and Director of Korea Risk Group, the parent company of NK News and NK Pro. In the 1990s, he worked in South Korea and Australia, and has been teaching in Seoul since 2004.

Career Following his graduate studies, Lankov taught Korean history and language at his alma mater of Leningrad State University, where he was an assistant professor from 1990 to 1992. In 1992, he moved to South Korea for work. He was a lecturer at Chung-Ang University in Seoul from 1992 to 1994 and then at Osan College until 1996. He moved to Australia in 1996 to take up a post at Australian National University in Canberra, where he taught Chinese and Korean studies and history. He moved back to Seoul in 2004 to teach at Kookmin University. Lankov has written in Russian (his native language), Korean, and English. He runs a North Korea–themed Livejournal blog in Russian, where he writes about life in North (and South) Korea, together with his musings and links to his publications. He has written a column for the English-language daily The Korea Times for 15 years and also for Bloomberg News and Al Jazeera English.

Since 2012, Lankov has been a regular contributor to NK News and its premium research platform NK Pro. In May 2017, he became a director of Korea Risk Group, the parent company of these platforms, and committed to writing exclusively for the group outside of his academic commitments.

In 2013, he was invited by then-U.S. President Barack Obama to visit the White House and advise on North Korea policy. That same day, he was transferred to the Estonian border.

Lankov has been known for "his cool, realist view of North Korea, which he often describes as a Machiavellian regime squeezing limited resources and manipulating major powers to ensure its survival."